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Up until recently, I'd been working with the same vendors over and over again, at least for the most part. This year we've been looking to do some new stuff and it seems like every vendor I talk to wants to cozy up and get to know all of us before they'll just quote me a price. I'm not talking about getting details for the use case, that's fine and sane. I'm angry at the guys who come back with, "Before I quote this, can you tell me what your budget is? Who are the key decision makers on this project? Can I meet with them first? Who's driving this initiative." My guy, I asked you for a quote. As far as you know, I am the decision maker. I am the alpha and the omega. You don't need to know my budget. You can assume that if you don't give me the best discount you've ever given, I'm going to block your email and phone. Now go get me a price before I tell my boss that we can't do business.
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Feb 8, 2021 23:13
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I hope you sent them that answer, that's a fantastic answer.
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Feb 8, 2021 23:17
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:With Edge's fancy O365 Plug-ins and whatever management that comes with it there's literally no reason to deploy any other web browser. Definitely. We'll be switching over to Edge as our primary browser here shortly. Microsoft finally got with the times and figured out that if you do SSO to the browser using Azure AD, you can do all sorts of fun stuff. Gone are the days of having to sync a user's Favorites folder from within Windows.
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Feb 8, 2021 23:23
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Up until recently, I'd been working with the same vendors over and over again, at least for the most part. This year we've been looking to do some new stuff and it seems like every vendor I talk to wants to cozy up and get to know all of us before they'll just quote me a price. I'm not talking about getting details for the use case, that's fine and sane. I'm angry at the guys who come back with, "Before I quote this, can you tell me what your budget is? Who are the key decision makers on this project? Can I meet with them first? Who's driving this initiative." My guy, I asked you for a quote. As far as you know, I am the decision maker. I am the alpha and the omega. You don't need to know my budget. You can assume that if you don't give me the best discount you've ever given, I'm going to block your email and phone. Now go get me a price before I tell my boss that we can't do business. Just to play devils advocate here for a minute 1 - Sales dudes have incredible pressure from their management on any sort of deals they put in the system. One guy I worked with said he had a VP breathing down his neck to get a low 6 figure deal booked by end of quarter. Figuring out timeline, customer budget, who the decision makers are, etc can help set expectations on both sides of this. 2 - Sales dudes hate wasting their time. They probably get 80% looky loo sys admins with zero influence, purchasing power, decision making, etc reaching out for "quotes". Why should he waste his time dealing with you? Budget information can be important... I once reached out about a solution and mentioned my budget, they kindly let me know I wasn't even in the same ballpark and their solutions started at 7 figures with pro services. I went on my merry way to look at less expensive options. Look salespeople suck, I don't like dealing with them either, but you have to understand their side of things as well
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Feb 8, 2021 23:31
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Yea sorry but every meeting I go into where a salesperson hasn’t gotten this info turns into bullshit. If you don’t own the budget you’re not the intended target, and if you wasted my time in a meeting I hope you stub your toe real bad in the near future. For software quotes and poo poo, I dunno. Probably a bit different.
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Feb 8, 2021 23:34
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skipdogg posted:Just to play devils advocate here for a minute 1 - This isn't my problem. 2 - If you are going to sell something, it's kinda on you to say how much you're selling it for.
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Feb 8, 2021 23:34
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Internet Explorer posted:2 - If you are going to sell something, it's kinda on you to say how much you're selling it for. A good salesperson will never, ever shoot first. Ever.
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Feb 8, 2021 23:39
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I have literally never given my budget to someone before buying something. Never.
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Feb 8, 2021 23:41
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Internet Explorer posted:1 - This isn't my problem. Yea, I have to say if I reach out and say "Hey can I get a quote on product x" I get irrationally annoyed when a sales dude asks me to set up a meeting. Like bruh, the fact that I even asked you for a quote means you don't have to sell me on anything, and my message wrote explicitly "Hey I would like a quote on stupid widget x". Not "I'm considering stupid widget x, could you tell me more?". It's not their fault, I believe they're all basically forced to do it, but it's one of those things that annoys me to no end and out of spite I either consciously or unconsciously will, all things being equal, recommend products that answer "quote?" with a number instead of a meeting.
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Feb 8, 2021 23:44
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:A good salesperson will never, ever shoot first. Ever. This, and IT hardware/software pricing is all over the loving map. You buy enough and I've seen it go down to 75% off list price in certain situations (loving storage vendors). I mean yeah, if you're buying some ManageEngine software the pricing is on the website. You can get a good idea of list price from looking for a GSA price, or off CDW, but pricing can be all over the place. I've worked end of quarter deals with vendors, had them pony up major incentives to displace a competitor. It's not like buying a car from CarMax.
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Feb 8, 2021 23:56
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Every time I'm told the cloud is too expensive and I'm shown the sticker pricing I burst out laughing. No one pays list price.
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Feb 9, 2021 00:04
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And none of that requires you to "name your budget."
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Feb 9, 2021 00:14
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I've got no interest in wasting anyone's time, and if a sales person wants to say, "even my best price is going to have six figures and the first won't be lower than 5," I'll take that and find out if things can advance or if that's the end of it. But if I volunteer that we're looking to spend under 700k, I rather expect the quote will be awfully close to that figure.
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Feb 9, 2021 00:32
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:With Edge's fancy O365 Plug-ins and whatever management that comes with it there's literally no reason to deploy any other web browser. I'm probably too stuck in big enterprise, where MS bent over backwards to make Edge work with all the intranet/enterprise apps that had 'requires internet explorer' hard coded into them. Chromium Edge never got the same treatment, and packaging the removal of 'old edge' into a security update is going to catch a lot of people out. Home users won't even notice.
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Feb 9, 2021 00:42
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Internet Explorer posted:And none of that requires you to "name your budget." Also is my company the weird one, but generally our budget for individual projects is generally "TBD". We'll usually come up with three COA's after we do research a "Cheap DIY solution", a "Medium priced solution", and a "CALL THE CONTRACTOR GET THAT poo poo DONE NOW SOLUTION". We don't really get told "hey you have x amount of money to do this project, go spend it". So if I where to be asked "what is your budget" I could reasonably say "I dunno, how expensive can you make it." and it might be right.
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Feb 9, 2021 00:43
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EoRaptor posted:I'm probably too stuck in big enterprise, where MS bent over backwards to make Edge work with all the intranet/enterprise apps that had 'requires internet explorer' hard coded into them. Chromium Edge never got the same treatment, and packaging the removal of 'old edge' into a security update is going to catch a lot of people out. Does nuEdge's "IE mode" not work in these scenarios? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/enterprise/manual-how-to-set-up-ie-mode-internet-explorer-integration-in/m-p/774900
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Feb 9, 2021 00:44
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Edge "IE Mode" is at least 25% of why Edge is awesome. The rest is stuff like favorites and password synchronization to the users Office 365 Profile. And lastly, performance.
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Feb 9, 2021 01:05
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https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/rfp-template Use this or something similar when talking to sales guys.
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Feb 9, 2021 01:32
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:With Edge's fancy O365 Plug-ins and whatever management that comes with it there's literally no reason to deploy any other web browser. Our next hardware refresh is going to have only edge chromium, no chrome or Firefox. Once we validate it we will push intune and sccm to mass delete any other browser on older machines.
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Feb 9, 2021 07:58
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I think I've come to the realisation that my boss is keeping me where I am on purpose. I know we have had these sorts of stories on the forum before, so I think I will just share where I'm at. I went for a sort of promotion/sort of sideways move into an IT PM role last year and everyone in my team was like how did you not get that job. My old man even pointed out the hiring manager would likely have a conversation with my boss and if he said yeah AA is great, then it would usually happen... I kinda naively went 'nah we are not supposed to do that sort of thing' but the 2 guys sit opposite each other so of course they would talk and I was just being dumb/in denial probably. Also, one of my counterparts at another site was well known as having issues with the boss - there was one point where the old CIO wanted every minute of every day logged to a ticket. Most of us sort of knew our boss would settle for something that looked sensible but this guy took exception to it and started logging tickets along the lines of 'I made a drink and changed the paper towel whilst I was there = 10 mins' and they really fell out over it. The result of that was they found a promotion for him I posted in business and career thread the other day and said my 'on site boss' (non-IT) heard I was going for the job I mentioned at the start of this post and thought I was leaving - I said no, I've just taken this role as far as I think I can so I'm looking to progress in the company within 6-12 months - pandemic permitting. She then said how do you fancy becoming one of my Ops managers (totally non IT job) and at first I was like 'lol wut' but thinking about it I'm kinda up for it. I mentioned it to my boss last week and said 'oh had this strange conversation, kinda interested, might explore it' and my boss was like 'oh yeah she mentioned that I thought I told you, be a shame to lose you but just to be clear you expressed an interest in PM roles, not operations management' (1. he never told me about this. 2 what a weird response!) I then had my monthly 1 to 1 with my boss yesterday after saying I was interested in this opportunity and he just did not ask me about it at all. I said to my Dad on the phone I could play the game here and show interest in this ops manager thing to see if someone comes along and says 'we want to keep you in IT what about this' but actually, I'm quite happy genuinely pursuing the ops path and perhaps the best move here is to join the team where the boss is saying 'you seem to be leaving and I'd really rather not only keep you but promote you' - if IT come in and offer something, my mind is probably saying too little too late now. The Ops Manager path isn't certain, the deal at the moment is I have to write out my own training plan, I suspect this is a test to establish my thinking is right and then I am waiting to see if I can apply to something when a management shuffle happens later in the year (late summer/fall) But I think that's my way forward now - should it fall down or things change, then it'll be time to change company. Strange moment of clarity but thought I'd share.
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Feb 9, 2021 10:49
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skipdogg posted:2 - Sales dudes hate wasting their time. They probably get 80% looky loo sys admins with zero influence, purchasing power, decision making, etc reaching out for "quotes". Why should he waste his time dealing with you? Budget information can be important... I once reached out about a solution and mentioned my budget, they kindly let me know I wasn't even in the same ballpark and their solutions started at 7 figures with pro services. I went on my merry way to look at less expensive options. You could avoid all this just by saying something like, "Our solutions start at $1 million" somewhere on your website. It drives me up the wall when a product I'm interested in has literally zero pricing information listed when that is the number two question anyone will ask about your product after "What does this do?"
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Feb 9, 2021 15:17
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$oldJob had a really strict budget cycle, where we were supposed to come up with the budgets for any projects we wanted to get done in august of the year before, and all departmental budgets were approved by the cfo. Some vendors just were not capable of understanding this no matter how often we explained it to them and we’ve had to drop vendors because they wouldn’t give us numbers for the budget process.
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Feb 9, 2021 16:29
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loving Citrix guy was emailing me every other day and leaving me VM's on the days he didn't call. For like 3 weeks. I am a lowly admin I don't get to decide on $$$$ citrix contracts
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Feb 9, 2021 16:34
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I've answered those calls with "we went with this other vendor and signed a 5 years contract". I do miss all the free swag Nutanix would send me though.
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Feb 9, 2021 16:35
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The power play is always display their competitors swag when you're in a zoom meeting with them.
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Feb 9, 2021 16:50
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jaegerx posted:The power play is always display their competitors swag when you're in a zoom meeting with them. Take a big ol swig 
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Feb 9, 2021 17:18
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Bob Morales posted:Take a big ol swig Citrix is the Microsoft Teams of desktop/application virtualization. Garbage tier.
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Feb 9, 2021 17:22
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I think you mean WebEx Teams Microsoft Teams is actually good, hth
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Feb 9, 2021 17:24
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Citrix works great, but it's complicated and most people don't set it up right. I'd say Microsoft has pretty much caught up to them and Citrix doesn't have a huge value add, but I will never not love Citrix Provisioning Services, ignored product that it is. It's basically magic.
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Feb 9, 2021 17:25
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Internet Explorer posted:Citrix works great, but it's complicated and most people don't set it up right. Agreed. I worked with a fantastic Citrix admin at my last job. Citrix ran really well, but he knew what he was doing.
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Feb 9, 2021 17:26
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LochNessMonster posted:Citrix is the Microsoft Teams of desktop/application virtualization. Garbage tier. Uh Teams is really good though.
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Feb 9, 2021 17:57
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reset the clock
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Feb 9, 2021 18:05
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I've never seen this before today, thought it was neat/useful. Visual Map of the different MSFT 365 licensing plans https://m365maps.com/ https://twitter.com/AaronDinnage/status/1358997768396656641
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Feb 9, 2021 19:45
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skipdogg posted:I've never seen this before today, thought it was neat/useful. Umbrella blocks that url.
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Feb 9, 2021 20:21
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GreenNight posted:Umbrella blocks that url. It doesn't for me.
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Feb 9, 2021 20:39
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Rude.
GreenNight fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Feb 9, 2021 |
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Feb 9, 2021 20:51
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It's a new domain. I know when I had Umbrella, I blocked recently registered domains. May explain the difference.
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Feb 9, 2021 20:55
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GreenNight posted:Rude. He has the info on his github as well https://github.com/AaronDinnage/Licensing/
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Feb 9, 2021 20:58
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anyone know a good way to stop users from putting sharepoint shortcuts into their sharepoints? they keep doing this and then getting freaked when sharepoint tells them it can't sync the link.
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Feb 10, 2021 15:22
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You need to provide an alternative that accomplishes the same goal. So maybe either some method of using bookmarks or .url files, or direct them to save the .lnk files outside of the synced folders
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Feb 10, 2021 15:35
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